


Move

by BeingProtector



Category: Push (2009)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-11
Updated: 2015-06-11
Packaged: 2018-04-03 23:28:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4118622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeingProtector/pseuds/BeingProtector
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Opening to yet another abandoned novel. Takes place directly after the film.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Move

Nicholas Gant winced as he lowered his aching body onto the motel bed. Blood from his ears had congealed on the sides of his face, but at least it wasn’t spinal fluid. Already the off-white fabric beneath him was staining black in the unlit room. No lights now. Despite their fresh victory, he and the girl still had to lie low.

He moved his head and looked for her. Cassie Holmes had dropped her leopard skin bag by the door and gone to the bathroom. Nick listened to the sounds: soft water plashing in the sink; the dry rip of toilet roll to absorb the filth they had both accrued in the night; a heavy tired sigh as she breathed out the old stress, making way for the new. Gradually, suddenly, she receded from his mind as exhaustion pulled him under.

* * *

In the morning the room was still dark, the Hong Kong sky lost to clouds and a forest of scrapers. The sun was weak and ill. Nick opened his eyes and listened again. Cars made a constant wet crunch twenty feet away. Birds were timid. Where was the girl? Here, next to him: a mass of semi-dyed hair and the only T-shirt she ever seemed to wear. The need to move tormented him. Carver was dead, but other figures were rising: phantoms, faceless, with unknown intentions, every one ambitious and assembling. He tried to shake his head to clear his mind, but the pain rang out at once.

‘Cassie?’

Silence, then a childish grumble. ‘Mm?’

‘Know any stitchers?’

She made a noise of humour and scorn. ’No. Unless you want to call Stowe.’

Nick stared thoughtlessly at the low, inexplicably dirty ceiling. ‘Not this time. I’m out of favours.’ A louder wet crunch. ‘Your mother didn’t see any more coming my way?’

Cassie sighed again, her brain switching from the purity of sleep to the deadening weight of day. ‘She doesn’t make the future, Nick. And she can’t see _everything _. Watchers can’t just rely on our visions.’__

Scrunch. ‘Good. I wouldn’t want to know even if I could.’

‘What a luxury,’ said Cassie, and she rose in fast impatience, yesterday forgotten, the present tense and demanding.

Before this, life for them both was slow and fraught. Now, together, it was a blizzard of fresh events, terrible and exhilarating. Impulses kept their heads above the tide: Cassie’s love for her mother; Nick’s strange devotions to both this thirteen year-old and the woman he had just reconnected with — Kira, who even now was making her cautious way to a rendezvous point outside the city.

Every object in the room had a curious significance. The green walls, the pale autumnal painting in the bathroom, the round red bedside table — all seen hours before by the girl. And to the man, everything loaded, pregnant, weighed in the context of a power he was still coming to terms with. Could he levitate the bed? He looked at it askew as he pulled on his grubby grey sweater, obscuring the white T-shirt flecked by crimson. Probably. But a crash was probable, either as he raised it too far or lost control and sent it falling to the floor. His glimpses of the future were based on logic and the information of a present he inhabited. Cassie was cursed by sinister mental pictures, devoid of broad meaning. These images only grew manageable with more life lived… How she wished her power was acute and predictable like her mother’s.

Nick watched her comb, straighten, prepare. Then they were ready. Nick and Cassie stepped out of the humid room and into the fresh yet frigid air of Hong Kong in September.

* * *

The water by the market was pale and milky. Nick and Cassie stood on a damp wooden dock and waited for ‘Miss Trouble’, as the girl had called her the night before. Cassie’s visions were enigmatic, and not always trustworthy. But while her suspicions about Kira had ultimately proved unfounded, still hostility lingered. More allies meant more complications… It would have been so clean and simple if only Nick were there with her. She knew that Division could only be faced by a team, but Kira imbued everything with emotions of the past, her past with Nick. Cassie needed him to be sharp if they were to rescue her mother from the government agency. Only then could she relax — only then could she be a child again.

Fishing boats had left hours before, when they were still asleep. People were scarce too, all gone to the bustling market between the city and the water. Suddenly a person was conspicuous: black and breezy, walking with confidence towards them. Kira. She reached them, her eyes only on Nick, Cassie regarded as a child. Nick and Kira embraced — Cassie turned away to the sullen river — she heard them kiss. Cassie longed then for a world apart from this, she yearned for snow, she wanted peace and humour… She snapped back to the present: Nick was giving her a friendly prod on the shoulder. Now they were off, three parallel lines, but whether they were shifting or irrevocable, Cassie did not know. The future gave her cruel coy winks… How she longed for a mile-wide stare.

* * *

They all needed to eat, and as ever Cassie’s wad of $10 notes was indispensable. The trio took a taxi from the docks to an obscure noodle bar on the edge of the city. The entrance was down a cold alley, but the inside was yellow and warm. In terse Cantonese Nick ordered three steaming bowls, three Cokes. Plans could wait while they wolfed. Only when they had finished did Cassie realise how hunger had animated her, kept her keen. Satiation was a curious threat: it slowed her down, made her wish not work, hope not hustle. Comforts reminded her of the distant mother, whose only thread to her daughter was in those vision shards, a broken picture, pieces missing.

Cassie shook her head, and Kira seeped in, unwelcomely. She and Nick were discussing the palpability of Division, its origin and physical heart. There was the government-sanctioned block in America, but also a tentacular, evolving nature. Division was reorganising itself right now: pushing, moving, shifting, watching.

Cassie evaluated their powers: one mover, one pusher, one watcher. Telekinesis, memory planting, clairvoyance. A potent trinity, but Cassie wished for more — a bleeder and a stitch would be indispensable. She remembered Pinky the shadow, Emily the sniff, Hook the shifter. Every other special was uncertain, half dreamed of, or suspect. Cassie had become very good at reading faces.

_(Manuscript ends.)_


End file.
